Thursday, November 29, 2018
Watch Lin-Manuel Miranda Teach Broadway Slang
New York Theater: Sure, you know what mugging is, and ingenue. But what is screlting? Or 2 Dow Shay? What do theater people mean when they use the word “corpse.” Lin-Manuel Miranda explains 15 theater terms, illustrating some with specific examples. He sings for “Money Note.” He looks baffled for “Going Up.” For “Showmance,” he tells a story about how Christopher Jackson met his wife.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Words are so powerful. It can make groups come together and define them as one. Every single industry has their own slang and language. I am pretty sure Conversion Percentage doesn’t mean the same for a church member than for a retail manager. But I think is amazing how as a community we have developed our own. We have a communication style that has been growing for centuries, and we still use phrases from ages before we were born. It goes down from generation to generation. For me, learning all this slang felt like entering a cool club. We steal terms form our daily lives and spin them around. For a normal person Blocking means literally blocking, while for us it means giving movements to the lines and setting them. From our working terms to our building terms. A “cove” for a stage hand is not the same as a ‘cove’ for a non-theater person. And like those there are a bunch of other examples.
I mean I knew most of them. Some of them were more performer slang so I was unaware of things like park and bark and corpse, but the rest were very familiar. I personally think we need more theatre slang so we can have more conversations and the muggles will have absolutely no idea what we are talking about. Also the charm of Lin Manuel Miranda is just so infectious, and whenever someone mentions Angela Lansbury and Julie Andrews they have my heart. He explains them all so well, and a hearty dose of self-deprecating humor goes a long way. Also my goal is to get a hotel to give me a key so I can take a hot bath when I need to, somethings just seem to perfect. However, all this being said I would not be surprised if a bunch of theatre people have never actually heard any of these terms, at least some that I know.
Post a Comment